Google withdraws 17m gambling ‘bad ads’ in 2016

Technology giant Google has said that it took down over 17 million gambling-related adverts during 2016 as part of an effort to tackle so-called ‘bad ads’.

In its annual ‘Bad Ads Report’, Google said that gambling was responsible for just 1% of all bad ads last year, with the company removing a total of 1.7 billion ads that breached its advertising policies.

The overall amount is more than double the 780 million adverts that were taken down in 2015.

Scott Spencer, director of product management, sustainable ads, at Google, said in a blog post yesterday (Wednesday) that gambling-related ads were removed as they did not have “proper authorisation from regulators in the countries they operate”.

However, gambling is some way off other industries in terms of bad ads, with Google reporting that it had to take down 68 million adverts for unapproved pharmaceuticals in 2016, a 500% increase on the previous year.

The firm also withdrew a total of 80 million adverts for deceiving and shocking users, as well as 112 million trick-to-click ads containing malware.